


Souvenirs

by Lilliburlero



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Ableism, Canon Relationships, Class Differences, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV switch, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 03:43:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1590443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reg reflects on his friendship with Laurie.</p><p>*</p><p>Content advisory for homophobic, ableist and sexist attitudes and language. Some murderous/suicidal/violent ideation (really just British-English idiom, but noting to be sure to be sure).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Souvenirs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amoama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/gifts).



Like his dad said, it’s often the littlest thing that’s the clincher. When Madge sent Spud up like that, Reg knew he was going to have to live with her for the rest of his life. Not live with her like he thought he’d promised to do on their wedding day, live with her like he’d have to live with his weather-wise, twingey arm. Maybe there was no difference, in the end of all.

He’d known about Spud pretty much from the off. You didn’t say _dearie_ in that tone of voice if you thought it was a tart you were saying it to and morphine couldn’t make you say it like that if you didn’t anyway. But Spud had opened his eyes, and the least he could do was turn a blind one in return. As it turned out, he wasn’t the sort of flaming poofter Reg had dreaded being saddled with. He _minded_ , poor bleeder, minded furiously about himself. Reg hadn’t really come across that before. There were sissy perverts that you felt nothing but pity for, and there were men who just liked to do it with other men and would beat the crap out of you, or worse, if you so much as hinted at hinting it. You didn’t live very long within whistling distance of the docks without running into both sorts. Spud was neither exactly, or a bit of both: that probably came of going to college, and having too much time on his hands to think about it. Reg didn’t want to think about it, either. But Spud had a way of kicking it right into the open so Reg had to scramble up the pitch before someone else got there first. It was exhausting, that’s what it was.

After a while, though, he couldn’t pretend it was just obligation. He started to care, in the way you would with any pal, to see he was treated right, or at least that he was happy with what he got. Spud cared about him and so he ended up caring about Madge too. You could see that wasn’t easy for him. He didn’t like her, long before she said the Lady Vera thing. He thought she was rough and brassy, which in a way you could understand: a bloke of his sort wasn't likely to appreciate what was good about Madge, but it was still a cheek, considering the filthy things he said sometimes. That remark about his stepdad-to-be being got on a po-cupboard by a cove in suede, or whatever it was. Madge might be a bit fresh or coy sometimes, but she didn’t talk plain incomprehensible dirt. 

But Spud had cared enough to send that telegram and take a carpeting from the Major about it. He could have been court-martialled, Ferguson had said. He’d done it for him and for Madge, when he didn’t even know what it was like—well, perhaps _because_ he didn’t know what it was like. Still, there were many brothers wouldn’t do as much. He’d never forget it. It was the same as when he'd prised open his eyes: Spud didn’t just assume the obvious worst, he thought of all the things it might be, and a way through it. Maybe that was what college did for you too: gave you a bit of a brass neck, to imagine you could fix things just by thinking them out. And sometimes it worked.

So, odd as it might seem, Reg felt the least he could do was take an interest in Spud's private life too. He’d tried to talk to him a couple of times about it, but he kept on mucking it up. To be fair, sometimes he’d just bottled it. Like when he tried to say something about young Raynes, the orderly. Spud’s shoulders stiffened, and he didn’t look up as would be natural, just said _Come again?_ into the back of his locker. Suddenly it all got mixed up in Reg’s head, he thought he couldn’t have got it right; that it was maybe how these well-got fellows were with one another in the ordinary way of things, so he turned it around lightning-quick and made it about Raynes being a conchie. He was quite proud of the way he’d done it. Inspired, it was, in fact, using the official guff about Seducing His Majesty’s Troops so that Spud would still know what he was on about, if he chose to. And Spud said in a horrible pansy voice, quite unlike his real one, _I guarantee that if any seducing goes on it’ll be done by me_. Reg shuddered a bit, even though he’d started it. It was daft: Raynes was old enough for the Army, or he wouldn’t be here, and he was nicely-built, wouldn't have any trouble taking care of himself if he had to, pacifism or no pacifism, but Reg couldn’t help feeling he was still only a kid. Spud oughtn’t to have said _seduce_ like that. And then he saw it was even worse. Spud thought he’d put one over. Bloody college boys, Reg fumed, thinking only they knew words had two meanings. He couldn’t exactly say that, though, it would all be up then. So he plastered on a proper cheesy grin and said: _That’s all a lad like that wants, someone to make a man of him_. If that didn’t get through, nothing would.

Reg wished Spud wasn’t so touchy about it. He did try, after all. It was more difficult for him. Even if you weren’t interested in girls, you could work out how to talk about them, because everyone did it all the time, you just had to listen, monkey see, monkey do. Though Spud wasn’t much cop at listening and taking notes, come to think, and when he talked about Nurse Adrian or shot a line about the talent at a party the effect was a bit comic. So you’d think he’d be all the more sympathetic to Reg’s plight. How was _he_ supposed to know when it was the same as being with a woman, and when it wasn’t, for pete’s sake? He cringed, thinking of sitting on the bath that time: he’d managed to put his foot in it first by supposing that they didn’t feel protective over each other like a man would over a girl, and then when he'd said something assuming this officer of his looked after him, treated him once in a while, Spud had gone off like a rocket. You couldn’t have it both ways, Reg reflected, and checked himself before that became an uncomfortably literal thought.

In fact, the whole officer business worried him. He wondered at Spud sometimes, he really did: it wasn’t just his leg, Reg reckoned, he’d been a bit wounded in the mind, too. He didn’t remember much about France, not just Dunkirk and the beaches, before as well. There was a word for it, where you forgot stuff after you’d had a bad shock, it left holes in your brain. He couldn’t rightly ask Spud what it was (he’d probably forgotten anyway, Reg thought, snorting quietly to himself), and he was hanged if he’d ask that sour git Neames. Maybe that sergeant chappie who used to teach would know. But whatever else, no-one forgot basic training. Having gone to the same fancy school as another bloke didn’t trump discipline and rank, because nothing bloody well did, only God, maybe, and Reg wasn’t even sure about Him. Spud was going to get himself in real bother if he carried on like that, laying himself open to all sorts, and Reg wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. It made him hot and cross just thinking about it.

The other thing that made him cross was the letter. It was very handsomely done, polite but plain and true. Though Reg shied to admit it, even privately, the word that came to mind was _manly_. But Madge _would_ go on about it, wouldn't she? How _beautiful_ it was. And not letting him show it to Ferguson, when it would have fixed everything in about a tenth the time and without her turning on the waterworks. She hadn’t cried noisily or messily, but she had forgotten her hanky, and Reg didn’t have his either, the office being just down the corridor from the ward. The Major wordlessly offered her a rough paper towel at the end of his reddened, clean, neatly-kept surgeon’s fingers. At that moment, Reg would have welcomed a direct hit from a German bomber; it was all he could do not to throttle the stuck-up buck-toothed bastard, and her too. 

Spud was going to catch it either way: they wouldn’t have been dropping him in it by showing the letter. There wasn’t anything to be ashamed of in it: that was the trick, the part you needed education to do. In fact, he was sure Spud had meant it at least as much for the hospital brass as he had for Madge, a sort of insurance policy, like, but there was no convincing her of that. She practically thought of it like a billy-doo, and over the course of the afternoon it had begun to get on his wick. He could see it was the relief of the thing made her keep taking it out of her handbag, reading bits of it to him, and perhaps he wouldn’t have minded so much if she hadn’t kept saying if _you’d written me a few like that things would have been a lot different_. At first he just grunted and said something about not having the schooling for it, but she wouldn’t belt up, and in the end he snapped and told her. 

‘ _Taste_. If I had his _taste_ in a few other ways you wouldn’t be as flipping chuffed about it.’

‘Other ways? Here, if you want to say something you should come out with it.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Think about it for half a minute, you silly cow.’ He made an indicative gesture.

Seeing it dawn was, Reg had to say, satisfying. But the satisfaction didn’t last long. He thought it would shock her into silence and sense, but she was fascinated. He seemed quite _normal_ to her, not at all what she’d expect, not like some of them she saw loitering outside _certain_ pubs. She wouldn’t think the Army would stand for— Maybe he just lacked _confidence_ because he’d taken a packet. He had such a _sweet_ face, not good-looking quite, but enough that lots of girls wouldn’t trouble about him being lame. It was sad, _tragic_ really. How did Reg know for sure? He was just a _quiet_ sort of boy, she thought. It wasn’t _nice_ to, when he’d done so much and he was so very _fond_ of— Her eyes widened. He _surely_ hadn’t— _had_ he? 

Feeling very warm and pink, Reg caught himself before he actually roared at her. It came out as an odd sort of muffled bellow, ‘Bloody hell, _no_. I’d tear his fucking—head off. Sorry, lovey. No, Christ, no. He just lets things slip sometimes. He can’t help it, poor beggar.’

Reg knew she hadn’t even meant to show Spud up when they'd run into him the next day, not really. You’d think he of all people would understand that. He hadn’t meant to make fools of himself and the trawler captain either, but he had. He could at least have thought up an explanation for her, like Reg had for him then. She was only trying to show she thought he was all right, that she knew he could have a laugh. True, she did it all wrong. But you'd think he'd be used to it, not take the hump like he did. It was a good thing he was being transferred to Bridstow, and that Reg himself was leaving the EMS hospital. It would have been hard to live with.

The evening after Spud left, he met Raynes coming back on duty.

‘Good evening.’

‘Hullo. You see old Spud off all right, then?’

His eyes were bright grey, like the sea at Margate on one of those days when the sun just gets above a bank of cloud. A shadow passed over them. ‘Yes. I think he’ll get on well there.’ 

Then a little pause. The Quaker boy was the original square-dealing merchant. If Spud had sent a message, he wouldn’t have kept it back, not on your life.

‘Good-o. We’ll miss him, though.’

‘Yes, I suppose we will.’ 

‘Well, I’ll let you get on.’

‘Good night.’

It was for the best. Everything was going back to the way it should be. Reg was returning to his unit, surer of Madge than he’d been since this lot started. Spud would spend a few weeks in Bridstow, his mum would get married, he’d settle to that, he’d be discharged from the Army and go back to college. Even the officer wouldn’t matter so much then. Reg wondered why he'd bothered worrying about that. (Sometimes he thought they had worried about each other, him and Spud, just to have something to worry about, not to feel so blooming _helpless_ all the time.) Spud didn’t belong to the Army any more, not properly, and that was why he’d got away with the telegram too: Reg felt both envious and pitying of that half-civilian condition. He wished it might have ended on better terms, but it had to end one way or another. It wasn’t the sort of friendship that could have survived outside hospital. It had been one of those peculiar things thrown up by the war, which left no souvenirs, only memories. Reg liked the way that sounded, and he repeated it to himself in a whisper. _No souvenirs, only memories_.


End file.
